


for every question why, you were my because

by Blacksneakers



Category: Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: F/F, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:34:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23101777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacksneakers/pseuds/Blacksneakers
Summary: Addy and Beth, after everything.“How did it happen, us tangled upon each other?”-Megan Abbott, Dare MeTitle from “Walls” by Louis Tomlinson.
Relationships: Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon
Comments: 20
Kudos: 214





	for every question why, you were my because

**Author's Note:**

> This takes some liberties with both the book and the show; in this version, Coach and Matt were both responsible for Will's death (the direction I'm pretty sure the show is headed in if it gets renewed for a second season) and Addy and Beth are both physically intact after that gets revealed.

I.

Addy sees Beth in the hallway after second period, having what looks like a very serious conversation with a boy. He’s nothing special, just a guy Addy’s never seen before, and he’s not even Beth’s type, or what Addy thought was Beth’s type: tall, athletic, a little intimidating. But Beth is staring fixedly at him, nodding her head and widening her eyes like he’s the most interesting thing in Sutton Grove. Addy feels a familiar prickle of jealousy, like she’s in third grade and she didn’t move fast enough to line up at recess and Beth decided to stand next to Jillian Randall instead. But she tries to shrug it off. She hasn’t talked to Beth in three weeks, the longest they’ve gone without any kind of contact since they got their first cell phones. They haven’t spoken since Coach and Matt got arrested and everything that’d been building up for the past three months got blown to hell. But if Addy’s honest with herself, which she knows doesn’t happen as often as it should, the problem with Beth didn’t start three months ago with Coach as much as it started six months ago, when Beth came back from spring break in Baja and gave Addy the bracelet that ruined everything. Addy tries not to think about it. She takes her books out of her locker and goes to study hall and forces herself not to watch Beth walk away from that guy, who Addy doesn’t even know but now hates as if he’s someone who wronged her in some deeply personal way. She puts so much effort into looking straight ahead, above everyone and everything, that she walks straight into Beth, stumbling and dropping everything she was carrying. Beth whips around, is obviously about to launch into her well-practiced cheer queen snarl (“Watch where you’re fucking going”) but cuts herself off when she sees that it’s Addy. They make eye contact and Addy feels her eyes fill with tears. 

“Sorry,” she says, looking away and gathering her books back into her arms. “I guess I just, um, got distracted.” She tries to focus on the wall behind Beth, not on her eyes. 

“Are you crying?” Beth’s expression softens, and that’s almost too much for Addy to handle.

“What? No! I just really need to go to study hall. I really need to, you know, study.” 

Addy knows she sounds like an idiot, and if things were the way they used to be, Beth would call her on it, laugh and say something cutting, but instead she just raises her eyebrows. “Okay,” she says. “Have fun studying.” 

And then she’s walking away, hips swaying in that stupidly short plaid skirt she likes to wear. Suddenly, all Addy can think about is that night at the Playland party, a million lifetimes ago. She remembers Beth in a skin tight dress, standing on a table and saying “What stripper has an ass like mine?”, or something along those lines. Addy wasn’t really listening at the time, too drunk and too distracted by the idea of partying with grown men and also probably by Beth’s ass. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her, why she’s on the verge of tears or why she can’t stop staring at Beth. She’s also very late to study hall. 

Addy wasn’t lying when she said she really needed to study; she has a calc test and a chem quiz this week but it’s been impossible to focus on anything lately and today is no exception. Halfway through the period she asks to be excused and goes to the second floor bathroom, where she knows Beth used to go to smoke when she didn’t feel like going to class, which was often. She’s been to this bathroom about twice a day all week, half hoping to catch Beth there but not really wanting to think about why. She doesn’t know what she would say if she did: “Sorry I ditched you for two months to hang out with an older woman who helped kill a guy, let’s catch up?” And she knows she humiliated herself thoroughly in the hallway today. “Saying you need to study and then crying? Get it together,” Addy says to herself in the mirror.

“Did you know talking to yourself in public is a sign of mental illness?” a familiar voice asks. 

Addy closes her eyes. Of course it is. And it’s not like she can be upset with Beth for showing up here when she came here because of Beth in the first place. “I didn’t know that,” she says, trying to keep her voice even. Beth walks over to the sink where Addy’s standing and starts applying lipgloss in the mirror.

“No, it’s not. But it would look pretty bad for you if it was, wouldn’t it?” 

“You caught me talking to myself once.”

“You talk in your sleep, too. You always have.” Beth pops her lips, then turns to face Addy.

Addy smiles in spite of herself; this is familiar, this is normal. “That’s so creepy,” she tells Beth, nudging her shoulder before she can remind herself not to. “You been watching me sleep, Cassidy?”

“Oh, every night. Just like in Twilight.”

“I’m surprised you even remember that part.”

“I have a mind like a steel trap, Addy, don’t you know that?” Beth’s smiling now too.

“Shut up, you know you didn’t even stay awake the night we tried to watch that movie. You fell asleep before Bella even found out Edward was a vampire.”

“Maybe I watched it a different time. You’re not the only person I’ve ever watched a movie with.” She has that look on her face that Addy’s seen a million times before: teasing, challenging. “Maybe I watched it with Ben Trammel.” 

And then the nice moment Addy thought they were having ends. Addy remembers Ben Trammel: Beth’s first high school boy, the one who used to buy them beer from the 7/11 two towns over. She never liked him. “Whatever. You probably ‘watched’ a lot of things with Ben Trammel. Anyway, I have to go back to class.”

Beth rolls her eyes. “Right, I forgot, you really had to study.” She puts “study” in obnoxious 2000s teen movie finger quotes. Addy feels herself getting annoyed. She’s not sure what she wanted from Beth, is never really sure of that, but she knows it wasn’t this. “Yeah,” she says, “I do. I do have to study, I don’t have time to reminisce with you about Ben Trammel.”

Addy’s making her way to the door when Beth puts her hand on her arm. “Cut it out,” she says. “Do you think you’re the only one who’s ever been jealous? At least Ben wasn’t our cheer coach.”

Addy feels her face heat up. She shoves Beth away from her, draws herself up to her full height, folds her arms across her chest. “You don’t get to do that,” she snaps. “You don’t get to bring that up. Besides, nothing ever actually happened with me and Coach, and you know that.”

Beth scoffs. “That doesn’t mean you didn’t want it to happen.”

“Jesus, Beth, the only person I wanted something to happen with was you, until you made everything fucking weird.” The words come out before Addy can stop herself, before she even has a chance to think them through. She takes a deep breath; Beth’s eyes are wider than she’s ever seen them, and for once she’s speechless. Addy can’t take back what she said, and she doesn’t really want to, either. So she does the only thing she can think of: she turns around, leaves the bathroom, goes back to study hall, and tells Mr. Feck that she was gone so long because she was having “woman problems.” It gets him off her back, and she’s technically not lying. 

II.

Addy half expects Beth to be waiting for her after school. She isn’t, and Addy feels even more disappointed than she thought she’d be. Beth’s absence from her life for the past few weeks has caused an almost physical ache, more pronounced at some times than others, but after what Addy admitted earlier, the feeling has become unbearable. That night, she runs past Beth’s house five separate times before she goes to the door. She stands there for the longest ten minutes of her life, her hands balled into fists and jammed into her jacket pockets. Finally, the door opens, and there she is, looking beautiful and infuriating and familiar all at once. At first, Addy doesn’t say anything. Eventually, Beth saves them both. “Are you coming in or not?”

Without a word, Addy follows her. They walk into the living room, and Beth sits down on the couch and waits for Addy to start talking. When she does, what comes out isn’t what she planned on saying. 

“When I was a little kid, my mom and I went to my cousin’s wedding and my grandma told me that someday I’d meet a nice boy and fall in love and I’d get married, too. And I told her that I didn’t know any nice boys and that when I grew up I wanted to marry my best friend. And she asked me who my best friend was and I said Beth Cassidy, except it sounded more like Beth Cathidy, because I still had that lisp back then-” 

“Yeah, I remember all about your lisp. And unless you’re trying to propose to me, I don’t know what the point of any of this is.”

Addy sighs. “The point is, I think I’ve always felt…a certain way about you. I’m just not, like, good at talking about it.”

Beth laughs sarcastically. “What do you mean? You’ve always been so great at talking about your feelings.”

Addy scowls at her. “Don’t be a bitch. You’re not exactly the queen of expressing yourself either. You haven’t made this easy for me.”

“Easy? I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. I was basically on my knees for you for months after we hooked up, and you wouldn’t talk to me about it! No matter how hard I tried, you never-”

“You made it impossible for me to talk about it! One day you’re obsessed with me, the next you’re practically making out with RiRi in front of me but god forbid I ever pay attention to anyone else or you go all crazy jealous and treat me like a fucking war criminal-”

Beth stands up so that they’re facing each other directly. “I’m the jealous one? All I had to do was say the name Ben Trammel today and you completely iced me out.”

“OK, first of all, you only brought him up to piss me off, second of all, I’m sorry I didn’t want our first conversation in weeks to be about your little ex-boyfriend-”

“He was not little, he was a varsity linebacker.”

“That is so not the point!”

“Whatever.” Beth looks down and wipes her eyes. When she looks back up, she looks as raw and vulnerable as Addy’s ever seen her. She clears her throat and asks, “Addy, what do you want from me?”

Addy closes her eyes, tries to gather her thoughts. “I’m miserable without you, okay? I think about you all the time.” 

They both sit in silence for a while. Addy stares at the carpet. She feels a sense of bone-deep exhaustion, like she just ran a marathon and then stayed on her feet for twelve hours afterward. When Beth starts talking, she’s almost afraid to look at her. 

“I saw you looking at me in the hall today,” she says. “When I was talking to my lab partner. You looked like you wanted to punch his lights out.”

“I didn’t know who he was. I thought he was hitting on you.”

“He was explaining our chem homework to me.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you were taking chem.”

“You totally do, we’ve talked about it.”

Addy finally looks directly at Beth. “I know for a fact that you have never once said anything to me about chem.”

Beth moves closer to Addy, gives her a real smile, and takes her hand. “Well, I have now.” A few beats go by before she adds, “You know that guy isn’t my type anyway.”

Addy blushes. “Yeah, I know. Maybe I was just looking at you because I thought you looked good today.”

“Like that’s any less lame.”

“I am not lame.” Addy shoves Beth, but it doesn’t exactly work while they’re still holding hands. First Beth starts giggling, then Addy does, and then both of them are in hysterics. When they sober up, Addy sits up, makes sure their hands are still tangled together, and asks, “If your lab partner isn’t your type, who is?”

Beth looks Addy right in the eyes, adopts her most serious, I’m-the-best-girl-in-the-world-and-I’ve-never-done-anything-wrong-in-my-life expression, and says, “Old men. Really old men. Grandfathers.” 

Addy rolls her eyes. “Good to know. I’ll be sure to keep my eye for out some old guys for you.” 

“Thanks, that means a lot to me,” says Beth, still keeping a completely straight face. “But if you don’t find any, I guess you’ll do.” 

Addy starts to make a joke, then hesitates and bites her lower lip before asking, “Are you sure?”

Beth looks at Addy without saying anything for what feels like a long time before she answers her. “Of course I am,” she says. “Addy, it was always you.”

When Beth gave her the hamsa bracelet, something in Addy knew what to do, and that same something knows now. She brushes Beth’s hair out of her eyes, leans forward, and does what she never stopped wanting to do. When they stop kissing, she says, “I guess there’s still a lot we need to talk about.”

Beth gets off the couch and reaches for Addy’s hands. “So let’s go talk, then.” 

And they do.


End file.
